en, are we to understand that you were whacked unjustly and
had reason for vindictiveness?"

"Go easy, Banana-Skin," protested Stanley. "Don't bully the kid."

"But," I said, beginning to feel that horrid array of tears
mobilising again, "that was some time before he gave me the lines--"

"Don't beat about the bush," interrupted Banana-Skin. "Did you feel
that you hated him?"

The question was not answered at once. I cannot explain how it was,
but the figure of Radley stood very clearly before my mind's eye,
and this helped me to speak the truth, though my voice broke a bit.

"Yes."

"Ah!" Everybody considered Banana-Skin to have elicited a damning
admission.

"Now," continued Stanley, his curiosity superseding his sense of
what was relevant, "how many cuts did he give you?"

"Ten."

"Poor little beggar! Didn't that seem to you rather a lot?"

I shrugged my shoulders.

"Now answer the Coroner that," commanded Kepple-Goddard.

"Yes," I replied.

"H'm!" grunted Stanley. "How did you know where you could find your
thousand lines so that you could tear them up?"

"I don't know what you mean. _You're_ bluffing now."

"Hallo!" cried Banana-Skin. "Didn't you hear him say '_You're_
bluffing now'? That shows that _he_ was bluffing before."

"Oh, that's a bit _too_ clever!" objected Stanley. "Give the kid a
chance."

There's nothing like sympathy for provoking misery and starting
tears, and, as Stanley uttered that sentence, I decided that God had
gone over to the prefects, and I would very much like to cry. To
drive back the tears I called to my aid all the callousness and
sulkiness which I possess. My face was the portrait of a sulky
schoolboy as Stanley continued:

"Now, Ray, which door did you leave the dormitory by?"

"I didn't leave it."

"I say," suggested Kepple-Goddard, "couldn't we send Bickerton to
ask all the boys who sleep in the same dormitory whether they saw
him leave it?"

"But they'd have been asleep, you ox!" put in Banana-Skin.

"Not necessarily."

"But it doesn't follow that, if they didn't see him leave
the dormitory, he didn't do it," objected Banana-Skin, the
self-constituted prosecuting counsel, who didn't want to see his
case fall to the ground.

"Not quite. But if they _did_ see him, it proves him a liar and
pretty well shows that he did."

"There's more sense in Kepple's idea than one would expect," gave
Stanley as his decision. "Dash away, Bicky, and find out."

So